Wofford Mixing Tradition With Technolgy in New Arena

The athletic department at Wofford is looking forward to the 2016-2017 athletic season but they can’t help to have an eye toward the 2017-2018 season when they will debut the brand new Jerry Richardson Indoor Stadium. On Tuesday the media got a tour of the brand new facility and got a sense of why the athletic department is so excited about the new 3,400 seat basketball arena and the 500 seat volleyball arena.

When Wofford began the process of working to design the new facility they wanted it to have a traditional feel but for it to be relatable to the basketball fans of the 21st century. Wofford athletics director Richard Johnson said that they took their inspiration from basketball arenas such as Hinkle Field House at Butler, Payne Whitney Gymnasium at Yale, and Reynolds Coliseum at NC State.

When walking into the entrance of the new Jerry Richardson Indoor Stadium you are welcomed to a large lobby that has a spacious area for fans to congregate pregame and also will include a team store and ticket booths. The new facility will have two large staircases on either side of the lobby leading up to the seating area but will also have an escalator that will change directions for pregame or postgame. There will also be an elevator for anyone needing handicapped access.

The new facility will also be very technologically-friendly as it will have Wi-Fi access for the fans plus video boards and ribbon boards to keep fans updated with all the information they will need during a game. It will also be state of the art for the media as it is has been prewired for the convenience of television and radio. When asked about the forward thinking that has been placed into the design of the facility, Johnson said “We’ve put all the amenities into it and part of our fortune is being able to go to the Panthers and piggyback off of ideas that they’ve used at Bank of America stadium.”

The Indoor Stadium will have locker rooms for the men’s basketball team, the women’s basketball team, the volleyball team, and the women’s field hockey team. It will also have four visitor locker rooms that will be an extra benefit if the facility were to hold tournaments in the future. The extra locker room space will also be beneficial for the Wofford football team as it will give them a place to call home when the Panthers are in town for training camp.

The Jerry Richardson Indoor Stadium will also be a benefit to the Wofford and Spartanburg community outside of athletics as it will hold up to 4,500 people for concerts and commencement ceremonies, which will make it one of the largest indoor venues in Spartanburg. The planned date for the new facility to open is September 1, 2017. Johnson said that when Mr. Richardson made the charge to them about the new facility he wanted to make sure of two things, “to create the best basketball facility for fans and to do it first class.”